So I usually strictly play standard, but tried arena for the first time in probably over a year, and in my first run remembered why I never play it. The arena draft is absolutely god awful and needs balance. One player can go through an arena draft and have an absurd selection of great tempo cards + 1-3 lategame legendaries, while another player gets garbage tempo selections and literally no legendaries in their draft. It makes absolutely zero sense. Hearthstone has enough dumb@ss RNG built into it as it is, why do they have a gamemode where RNG impacts your success so heavily before you even start playing?
At the very least, they should make it so each and every draft has the same exact amount of card rarities in the selection. If games go late, and each player is down to 1-2 cards relying on top decks to pull ahead, the player that top decks a Shutterwock, Kalecgos, [insert any random strong lategame legendary here] etc. is going to win 100% of the time when his opponent has nothing but 5-7 cost cards and maybe a kraken at best in his deck left for lategame. It’s just absolutely horrible balance and I seriously don’t understand why they haven’t changed this. It’s no wonder why none of the pros take it seriously.
7 Likes
Um i dont know what your complaining about. The arena has been MUCH better since the bucket system was introduced - no more “deciding” between wisp, yeti and Flamestrike.
Bad drafts happen. Deal with it. I’ve made it easily past 6 wins with a deck with no legendaries. Skill can carry just as hard as RNG.
Go on HSreplay and look at the arena section. You’ll see what cards are most often drafted.
Or if you prefer, you can draft based on what the Lightforge says which easily lays out what cards are better with a handy points system.
Or you know, if it bothers you so much, stop playing
3 Likes
The fun part of arena is making it work with a bad/mediocre deck, not steamrolling opponents with a perfect draft.
3 Likes
Nah arena is awesome, the worst days of arena were gadgetzan (and unguro), my god those were dark days.
He doesn’t play Arena yet expects to do well in it - when he doesn’t he blames the format. A story as old as time.
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I don’t play arena and suck horribly at it.
Dont feel like burning the gold to play more and get better at it either.
Legendaries are very rare in Arena and pretty much Epics/Rares/Commons decide the outcome of the match. There are other reasons to say that Arena is terrible but this is not really one of them, that you lose because you have no legendaries in the draft.
Only case was back in the day, Death Knights in Arena would skew things, but most often you’re winning through some sort of board control through minions and some removal: value a Flamestrike much higher than some legendary in Arena.
Even just two wins (so going 2-3) gets you something like 45 gold and a pack so you only lost five gold if you’re interested in the newest packs. It does mean that you need to be interested in the latest packs but if you are, Arena is super cheap (and it really isn’t difficult to get to the point where you’re making a small profit).
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I think it shows that the OP is set with the standard mode thinking. The vast majority of legendaries are worse than a decent common or rare. Conjurer’s calling, walking fountain, flamestrike, firelands portal, eccentric scribe, backstabs or saps, they all are much better than your average legendary.
Not to mention that each person having the same amount of each rarity wouldn’t help close the power gap either. For instance imagine if each person got 1 legendary per draft, and you faced tony/kalecgos and you had to choose a legendary between nomi, greenskin (especially in a non weapon class) and the beast.
You have to respect where the deck is taking you. You can’t just try for the same curve everytime and expect it to always work out. Especially in this meta, many times it’s not worth going for the late game. My latest 12 win run had no legendaries and its only cards that cost over 5 were kidnapper and a spark drill.
Finally the reason why the pros don’t take it seriously is because there isn’t really any prize money or tournaments (except from twitch rivals which only happened now) plus more people play standard so more people are interested in watching people stream standard. There are arena only streamers and they have been consistent in placing in the leaderboards, plus they have been winning over the pros in the arena only tournaments so the variance is less than you think (although admittedly you ideally want many runs to make sure luck doesn’t show a noticeable effect).
The current wild arena - from 20 arena runs I got 3x 12 wins ,one of them was 12-0.
Maybe you aren’t good at arena mode.
First wild arena rotation I had around 5~% winrate ,this one I am above 6.
Yeah it is horse sh-t. The random can be fun but more often then not you stupid cards with no synergies. Perhaps if they Would have changed it so you have more then 3 chances.
Arena at the moment is horrible the first person to get funglemancer or bonemare wins and dont even get me started on abysal enforcer if you dont have early removal you lose had a nice preist deck just but 3 fungle mancers for my oppenent is just an insta win i love arena but this wild one is terrible i hated fungle bone and violet worm before but even more so now as krip would say win more at its worst
Christ almighty is this board filled with crybabies.
Drafting is a skill. You make the synergy. Yes, RNG is involved. Das da fun. You pretty much have to insta-quit to lose a significant amount of gold compared to buying decks outright. It’s silly to do so, really, unless you want to pull from specific packs.
Get amongst it, or quit whinging - it’s feckin’ fine, and a rompin’ good time. Tournament mode, ie creating something from the randomness of some fresh packs, is the purest form of card battle.
Aw, you didn’t make an Exodia deck? Your opponent was luckier than you?
Yeah, that’s life. Be a mang.